Sixers Accept Charity, Again

I couldn't agree more that the Sixers need to give Jrue much more playing time to develop him. Unfortunately, he's on a team with a horrible coach that will probably scar him and force him into poor defensive habits.

Eddie Jordan isn't a bad defensive coach because he doesn't stress defense. He's a bad coach because he doesn't understand it. He's never been a defensive-minded coach simply because he doesn't know how to win games that way. The only way EJ knows how to win games is by outscoring the opponent without any regard for defense.

It feels like EJ's strategy these days is -- when the Sixers go on a good run and are up, he simply says:

"We got a lead. Let's put Dalembert in!"

And when the Sixers are down, he goes:

"Let's put Louie Williams and Speights in!"

This strategy might work sometimes but you can't do that in every situation.

Anyways, I wish the Sixers had a real coach...it'd be so much more fun to watch and with the talent on this team, we'd give the first round opponent a very interesting and competitive matchup.

I fear that Stefanski knows (too late) that Jordan is an idiot but simply cannot fire him without losing his own job. Unable to go to Big Ed and ask for a do-over, he has to watch this mess and pray for miracles. If he doubles down by trading to suit the moron he hired, we are all in big big trouble.

"When you look at this roster as a whole, which is a more pressing need: A point guard who can penetrate or a point guard who can stop penetration?"

The latter, all things being equal, but I'd also take the really good player over the pretty good player and build my roster around really good players instead of saying, "well, I already have Lou Williams and Willie Green, so clearly I need to draft a ball-stopper to play alongside them, not another guy who can penetrate." It's pretty clear that Ty's going to be a better player than Lou Williams down the line if he isn't already, to say nothing of Willie Green. Now whether Ty will be a better player than Jrue 3 years from now, I don't know, but I wouldn't say that you don't draft Lawson because we already have people who do what he does well, as those guys aren't very good players. Now on the other hand, if you were trying to pick between two swingmen, one of whom is a great finisher and defender, the other of whom has more of a long-range and in game, then yes, you pick the latter because Iguodala is good enough of a player that you don't draft guys who replicate his skills and bring nothing new to the table. But if you can find a better version of Lou Williams in the draft, you take him and worry about getting rid of Lou later.

I personally think any team should look more for the unique player who can defend against the growing trend in the league than the dime-a-dozen player who can perform the act offensively.

I also think the Sixers wouldn't be any better right now if they had Lawson playing 30 minutes a night for them. They'd still be a team that couldn't defend anyone, thought they'd probably be moderately improved offensively. If Jrue was playing 30 minutes a night, however, I think you'd see improvement on the defensive end without much of a drop-off offensively.

If we had a coach who knew his ass from his elbow, we'd be building our team around what Jrue, Iguodala and Brand bring to the table defensively.

I agree Brian. How many point guards can effectively limit penetration the way Jrue does? It's a rare talent these days. I think Greg Popovich, Phil Jackson, etc would like to have a player like that on their team.

I reemmber, but what Derek did when he disproved the 'brown doesn't play rookies' theorem was to compare minutes of rookies brown had to rookies at 'equal' draft pick over history...basically brown plays rookies about the same as any other coach for spot they were picked was what Derek found.

This doesn't include his time with the Bobcats. In my opinion, Augustin's minutes were low.

If Brown's approach really is to give playing time based on ability, I tend to agree with his philosophy. A lot of people think that young players should be given playing time for experience's sake. I think practicing with legit starters and watching them on the court can be a good learning experience too. Rookies should be given court time, but to me, 25+ minutes a night is unnecessary unless deserved.

Look at that list. In 7 years there's 7 first or second year players who played 20+ minutes per game.

Now compare that with their draft position, and the average playing time players at that draft position have.

I'm at work, and don't have the time to run through all the numbers again. Nor do I really have the interest in doing at, as it's an old argument. but outside of Larry Hughes, the vast majority of those players were selected after pick 20. The fact that they got the playing time they did shows that Brown is willing to play young players if he believes it will benefit the team.

Just to further expand on this, what his post was sorely missing was where these players were drafted, and how much the average player at those positions plays in their first two years.

Of that list of players he used as "damning evidence" that Larry Brown doesn't play young players (some on that thread even used as proof that he hurts their development), exactly THREE of those players were drafted before 20, one of which includes colossal bust Darko (Larry Brown was on record as saying he would have selected Carmelo if Dumars didn't override him).

Three players in the top 20.

8 players in that list were undrafted free agents, another 8 were second round picks. Using Ira Bowman and Jabari Smith in a post detailing how Larry Brown doesn't play his young players doesn't really add much to an argument.

This team's identity should be a scrappy defensive team but Eddie Jordan obviously disagrees. If Larry Brown, Pops, or Sloane were to coach this team, I guarantee you the starting the lineup would be this...............PG-Holiday, SG-Iverson, SF-Iguodala, PF-Brand, C-Dalembert.

tk76, same mixed signals as usual; I liked it better when E.S. told the coach what to do. By the way, speaking of defense, where is this team without Sam, I hate to say, and a]what kind of offers does he draw when we let him off the books and b]if he comes back for 5 to 6 mill. per , would ya? 6 pts., 8 reb., 2 blocks in 24 min. is what Portland just got for the #1 overall pick just about.

Is there any way to get a breakdown of the team's performance this season when the backcourt is either ai/lou, green/ai, or lou/Green? The AI/lou backcourt is an absolute joke defensively, and it also seems like a waste on offense because they do so much of the same things.

I have the most recent rotation chart on my computer at home. I was curious about this heading into last night's game, and actually the Lou/AI3 back court was in the positives, I believe. Need to double check, maybe I can get my wife to email me the spreadsheet and I'll respond later.

Any other combos you want? You can check out the data by going to depressedfan.com and clicking on 2009-2010 rotations on the black bar in the middle column of the page. You can also click here to download the spreadsheet.

"“The will and determination to win was at an all-time
high, to win on this floor,” said Sixers coach Eddie Jordan. Only minutes after the game, Jordan appeared out of breath.
How did he assess this road trip? “My heart is still beating like a rabbit running across the field,” Jordan said. “I haven’t really thought about it. I’m happy for our team; I’m proud of them. And we’re just beginning, I hope, to go uptown.”

He is speaking like he just beat the Denver Nugget team that had their complete team. The Denver Nuggets were a Developmental Team last night. Were missing 3 of the their key players.